Peace Love & Happiness

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Fairy Tale Retell

Ayla and Miles have Arabic class everyday. Ayla has it for 45 minutes everyday. She knows how to write her name and she can write mine as well. Pretty cool to see her do that!

Miles came home with this picture the other day...I just love it! Love his pictures of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Also love that is Arabic teacher wrote the words on there. Good exposure for these kids!

Our walk to school

So we literally have a 3 minute walk to school. We have to be there at 7:30. This is the same time that kids arrive as well. Kids come into our rooms at 7:50...early compared to the states!

This is the view of our walk to school...

This is the path to our Villa (that is what they call them here). We live in Roggue Pad #5. I will take pics inside...post them this weekend. Weekend meaning...Friday and Saturday!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

IPS...International Program School

The next morning Jim had us meet him at 7 am for breakfast. He said the best way to beat jet leg is to start your schedule right away. So we did it! We got a tour of the school, met our kids and our kids saw there classrooms. Jim took us to the grocery store called Timimi's, which is just like a Safeway really. Minus all the Arabic! You can get a ton of American things there.

Some other highlights...

Went to one of the big malls...really nice! Went to a Chili's restaurant...got a juicy burger wi fries! Women have privacy folder things up, so men can't see them while they are eating because they are covered up normally! Also prayer time came and servers and all leave for about 15-20 minutes. So you have to plan things around prayer time. Also, prayer time happens 5 times a day here. You can hear it all over...no matter where you are. We can hear it in our house...sort of getting use to it now!

Here are some picture of the kids in their uniforms!

Here is me in my abaya! Hot huh?

We made it to Saudi!!!

It was about an 1 1/2 drive to our house from Bahrain with all the stopping. I guess that isn't bad. Once there, our Director Jim was there to greet us. The house looked great, fridge had some food, cell phones with numbers and some nice cold waters. Wish they were beers, but that won't happen here. Dang! I have I idea how many hours we traveled. All I know is that it is a long way!

First pic in our new home! We are all pretty tired here! Long day of travel, but glad to finally be here!

Flight to Bahrain

After our bus ride over we get onto our flight. It was so hot in the plane. The AC could not hang with that kind of heat. The air coming out looked like steam...it was crazy! Just sweaty madness! Finally flight gets going for some AC relief. Yes! Those towelettes came in really handy when you were a sweaty mess! Ha! It was only a 45 minute flight to Bahrain.

Brian, Principal for the middle and high school came to pick us up. All luggage arrived, so we were really happy with that! We then took this huge bridge called the Causeway to Saudi. There we had to go through multiple guards/ toll type things. Then we went into this office to get our visas stamped since it was our first time entering the country. Guys there were fairly rude, work at their own pass and don't really seem to enjoy there job! Very interesting! The driving is super crazy...anything goes!

Here is one of the stops!

Quatar Airlines

So we took Quatar (pronounced "cutter") airlines to Doha. 13 hour flight but it really wasn't that bad. It is little confusing loading that airlines, but they get the job done. So on your seat they have a blanket, pillow and this little bag of goodies. The goodies consisted of earplugs, socks, eye mask, toothbrush and some wipes! Didn't understand the wipes until we took our flight from Doha to Bahrain. I'll tell you more about that on the next entry! Also on this long flight they had your own tv and you a could watch movies, tv shows, play games with and actually hand held device. We all really enjoyed that...helped pass the time! We all slept but I think Miles slept the most with about 6 hours!

The many wipes we were offered!

This was one of the first things I saw in Arabic...now I see everything like this!

So we find out that all people get on a bus after the flight. So this huge flight gets off and we all get on several buses. Bizarre...beside that...really hot and sweaty! Let me remind you that the sun was down! ;) so once we get off the bus we enter a building and have to walk through this maze to get our luggage checked again. We then get to our connecting flight...take a bus to our next plane! Here is where things get real sweaty!!!